Danielle Rudess knew that Adam Chanler-Berat was a special actor when he turned what could have been tragedy into comedy.

In 2001, Rudess' Nyack-based Helen Hayes Youth Theatre was creating the first student production of "Les Miserables." Chanler-Berat was playing the conniving Thernardier when his voice began to change.

"It was really unfortunate and challenging for him," Rudess recalls, "but Adam is also extremely bright and he was able to use his voice changing as a benefit to his performance."

Chanler-Berat, 22, laughs at the memory.

"I found a way to make it work - and here I am," he says.

"Here" is Broadway, where on Wednesday, Chanler-Berat, a 2005 graduate of Clarkstown South High School, makes his debut in "Next to Normal," Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey's rock musical about a family in free-fall, directed by Michael Greif ("Rent," "Grey Gardens").

Chanler-Berat is Henry, the "lazy, loner, bit of a stoner" boyfriend of Natalie, played by Jennifer Damiano of White Plains.

Damiano made her Broadway debut in "Spring Awakening" two years ago - when she was 15. She says she considers this her true debut.

"I have so much more purpose here," she says. "In 'Spring Awakening,' I wasn't telling the story every night when I wasn't going on, which was most of the time. Here I am."

The story of "Next to Normal" is about Diana (Alice Ripley), her husband, Dan (J. Robert Spencer), their daughter, Natalie (Damiano), and son, Gabe (Aaron Tveit). Two doctors are played by Louis Hobson.

And there's Henry.

"He's like my perfect little storyteller," Damiano says. "He gets inside my head and shows my fear of loving and being loved and commitment. Natalie puts up all these walls around her and Henry pokes little holes in the walls for himself but also for the audience to see in."

What they see is a family in disarray. Diana finds comfort and discomfort in her medicine cabinet. Dan is trying to hold the family together. Natalie is aiming for Ivy League but losing her grip. And Aaron is not what he seems.

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The show, which began life as a 10-minute musical at the BMI Musical Theatre workshop, has been on a 10-year odyssey of workshops and presentations.

In February 2008, it played Off-Broadway's Second Stage and was thought to be ready for a move uptown, with a performance that earned Ripley Outer Critics Circle and Drama Desk nominations.

But the creative team - Kitt, Yorkey and Greif - decided the show needed work and producer David Stone agreed. In an unusual move, in the last weeks of the Second Stage run, they made changes - dropping songs, changing lines - that Kitt says showed them other possibilities.

"Brian and I have honed in on the story to show the family's process of trying to get Diana well," says Kitt, who once called Armonk home.

In November, "Next to Normal" played Arena Stage in Washington - minus Brian d'Arcy James, who originated the role of Dan but moved on to play the title character in "Shrek" on Broadway. Spencer stepped in.

Kitt and Yorkey wrote and rewrote, swapping new songs for old, dropping two songs that had divided critics - one about Diana's trip to Costco, another called "Feeling Electric" - and turning some dialogue into lyrics.

What remains is Kitt's eclectic and electric score, with songs styles that range from rock to country to a sweet little music-box number.

Kitt says the D.C. detour gave the show clarity, something Diana pursues in the musical.

"We didn't go there with any preconceived notions about what would happen after Washington, D.C.," Kitt says. "We knew there was potential, if things went well, that New York could be a possibility, but really, we were going to finish the work. If that meant the show was finished in D.C. and then went on to other incarnations and a new life with other people, that would have been great.

"But the fact that things went so well in D.C. and we're back in New York is kind of an incredible occurrence."

April might mark two big arrivals for Kitt. His wife, Rita Pietropinto, is expecting the couple's second child on April 30.

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On stage, Damiano and Chanler-Berat play teenagers who share angst and pain and some messed-up family lives, summed up in the lyric from the song "Perfect for You": "We'll be the one thing in this world that won't hurt."

They also connect in three sweet, spare songs - "Hey 1," "Hey 2" and "Hey 3" - that seem easy but were devilishly hard to learn, Damiano says.

Now that they've been singing them over the 20 months of work on "Next to Normal," Chanler-Berat marvels at the work Kitt and Yorkey did on those three seemingly simple songs.

"They're written rhythmically," he says. "They come out just as they would in conversation."

Chanler-Berat remembers the moment it began to sink in that he was coming to Broadway.

"It first really hit me when I was on the street and I saw my giant face on 45th Street," he says. "And I could see every pore and this mole that I didn't even know existed on my neck."

"And, apparently, I'm not very good at shaving," he adds.

Another milestone was moving into the Booth Theatre last month and realizing, "this is a Broadway house. You're going to be playing to people from Kansas."

"Next to Normal" gives Damiano another Broadway credit.

And in January, it gave her a high school diploma months before the rest of the White Plains High School class of 2009.

"I was tutored in D.C. the whole time and right before we closed I finished up my tutoring and all my coursework," she says.

Will she march onto the stage in White Plains to pick up her diploma in June?

"My mom really wants me to, but I'm like, 'Mommm!'" she says, extending that last word as teenagers do. "Still, it's after Tonys and everything, so I dunno."